Wednesday, May 30, 2012

End of May 2012

I haven't been doing much painting, because I have been getting my vegetable garden planted and cleaning up my yard. Oh my aching back. I am going to do the finishing touches on the painting I started a few weeks ago of the St. Michael's hotel in downtown Prescott, AZ and taking it into the Arts Prescott Gallery on Saturday. It will be posted on my website (www.LinneThomasArt.com) next week.

My dogs, Bessie (in front) and Baxter enjoy the garden too. I built boxes last year in an attempt to avoid bending over as much as possible. It works until you need to stir up the soil and add fresh manure etc and that required emptying out the boxes and sifting the soil, replacing the newly refreshed soil back in the boxes. Oh my aching back!

When I lived in Chicago, I had a fabulous vegetable garden and yard --- there something about actual soil ( not dirt) and rain that makes a garden grow. The first gardening tool I bought 23 years ago when I moved to Prescott was a pick axe --- that should say it all!

It's been a typical Prescott spring, high winds, cold temperatures one week, hot the next and NO rain at all. It froze one night this past weekend and I lost plants and had to replace them. I have been doing lots of watering. Now it's all in and I look forward to eating beans, tomatoes covered with fresh basil, lemon cukes and zuccini later this summer. I also like to do paintings of produce and take pictures of the praying mantis on patrol on my plants. Life is good.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

I have entered the world of YouTube videos once more, but this time on my own. The last one was done by the gallery advertising team. I am now producing, writing, editing and starring in my own "instructional" videos about my paintings and techniques in oil and watercolor. I even do costuming, hair, and make up! It was a lot of work, I learned a great deal and have a long way to go to produce better videos, I know, but this one was a lot of fun. This is a painting I started of the the St. Michael's Hotel in downtown Prescott, Arizona last week. I will be trying to get it finished up by early next week and into Arts Prescott Cooperative Gallery in downtown Prescott, AZ.

We had our semi-annual change of dislays in the gallery. We call it "Foo-Foo night" for the wall artists (painters, photographers, leather, baskets and potters) last night. Lots of ladder climbing, patching and painting walls, but the gallery always looks fabulous after it's done. We have gotten good at it after 18 years and 36 moves and we were all done in a few hours--a new record for the wall artists. The jeweler and glass blower "center artists" move around tonight for their "Foo-Foo" night. The whole experience is such a great seasonal way of refreshing the gallery and lots of new work and energy are now part of Art Prescott Cooperative Gallery! My new display is shown below; I was too tired to take more pictures last night!